He finds out his companion is a time agent, and is betrayed, he feels betrayed by his best friend, the Doctor - and he has this moment in his TARDIS where he asks himself what his choice will be.
Or something! Like. I literally started off hating that guy! Even by the end of ShB, when he begged you to remember his people had lived, I was all salty and wanted to be like "NOPE! I'm forgetting them as soon as I walk away from here just to spite you!" but of course that wasn't an option. XD And then EW happened and Oh No! A switch in my
Of course, trauma counseling could only go so far when he had his brain scrambled by a deiform entity literally made of his people's desperation to survive.
It was all still a little too vague for me before EW, when he talked about families and kids and shit, it was like...ok, nice words, but I didn't see it. And then you got to see it and it was so painful.
I would also include him in the list of "people who realized how fucked up they are," but at the same time, he understood, but was still like "Look, I get it, but I still stand by my morals. You were just right." which...idk what that classifies as.
Well, a big part of the narrative was the idea that the Ascians were fighting for the exact same thing as the Scions, it's just...their world and the Scions' world are incapable of coexisting.
So, he realized and understood he did horrible things...but refused to regret prioritizing his own people. (And also...there's a strong argument that what he'd done was ultimately necessary, and that the heroes would have failed and the world would have ultimately fallen to ruin otherwise.)
Yeah, and when you really think about the implications of what he would have seen the worlds as, it makes total sense. He was seeing something that was horribly broken, glued back improperly, and he had to break to put the pieces back in the proper places, without realizing that those pieces had already repaired themselves in ways that he didn't
That was the realization that made me just sit there while playing it, like...gobsmacked and horrified. And feeling like a bit of an ass for just writing him off as a shitty, evil person and nothing more.
They did a good job of taking a group that seemed just evil and selfish and turning it into a situation where very few people can say they'd have done much differently.
Yeaaaah. Honestly, the storytelling in this game has blown me away. And this is coming from someone who got really tired of FF games because they seemed so "samey." A+++ work, guys, holy shit! 'cause everything he did just has a horribly sad, twisted, out-of-love aspect to it that just shakes you when you finally see it, and you just get it.
lol YEP. Urge to shake is still there, just because the things he did are so bad but you wish he hadn't had to go through the things that put him there. His sass is so great, though, it makes you want to smack him. Lovingly. But maybe hard.
LOL yeah. XD I was sassing him the entire time we were dealing with him in EW. Even if it got him sassing back in threatening ways. Though now I'm just imagining the WoL just...keeping things on hand to continuously pepper him in the back of the head with. Meanwhile, Hythlodaeus is just snickering.
And then after everything was over...my WoL...might have gone down to Garlemald and grinded his reputation with the locals until they'd sell him that portrait of their founder so he could angry-hang it on his basement wall.
Like. If we'd only ever gotten to know that Emet, I would have thought he was the best thing ever! Absolute asshole who tries really hard to hide his heart of gold but is kind of bad at it, not that his boyfriend telling everyone how to get around his tsundere attitude helps him any. XD
I did get the sense that a lot of that him came back once his head was his own again? Just. With a ton of trauma regarding mortals that made him try even harder to act indifferent.
Oh yeah, I totally get the feeling that the Emet we saw last was the Emet from the earliest timeline, but with all of the memories and experiences, so...he still did shit, but he's not seeing things through the twisted lens he was, and he can accept them for what they are without seeing them as ghosts of their former selves. He's just got a reputation to
The smile before they disappeared, though, fuckin' wrecked me. I had mostly gone from openly sobbing to just giggling and YAY because we were winning! And then he did that. And damnit, I'm still not over the whole "We're the reincarnation of the third spouse in their little polycule" feels, so that brought the tears right back!
I honestly haven't, yet, but I've got the tab open with them on there 'cause everyone is like "Omg why haven't you read them yet???" XD I just have adhd.
Yeah, I just headcanon that Azem was just this massive, goofy doofus who kept getting into trouble because they kept trying to help everyone and were so vexing for him at times. XD 'cause that's honestly the way mine is, when shit isn't hitting the fan.
Yesss, lay it on me. I've been suffering these feels for a couple weeks since we just finished the MSQ, now, might as well get the most out of it while it's here!
And! When Emet's first son as Solus was born? He saw promise and even hope in the boy. He genuinely loved that child. Who then...succumbed to some illness when Varis was still a little kid.
He doesn't, really, he just hates that his grandson reminds him of that 'momentary lapse', the time when he was happy with his mortal family, and the tragic loss of his precious son :'>
...as someone who went to college for geology, that both amuses the fuck out of me, but also *??? WHEN DID WE LICK ROCKS??? I NEED TO REWATCH THAT!" XD
When the subject comes up with my Emet, he is very infuriated by mortality and the fact that it's so common for people to just...drop dead, in the prime of their life, with so much undone.
Honestly, I can see the loss of his son as even more egregious, if he'd really let himself get attached. Just finally finding a reason to be happy for the first time in thousands of years, maybe he's started to heal enough that something is getting through the fog? and then bam. It's all gone again before it's even begun, in his eyes, and the break it
Man, and then just the thought that he saw the WoL and some part of him realized who they were and just HOLY SHIT. AFTER ALL THOSE YEARS! Who even knows if he understood what he was doing, at first, or even consciously recognized them, and wasn't just acting on instinctual familiarity that made him feel like trying to get the scions to see his side of
Ahh, ok. I couldn't remember when he first commented on it, just that we first saw him being crazy-cackling-evil villain, telling his grandson to do what I say or else, and then when that was a failure, coming to us and being like "Alright, fuck it, let's talk"
I'm pretty sure his inconsistent behavior at the end of ShB was him genuinely wanting to cooperate with the WoL, but Zodiark flat out refusing to allow him to give up on the Rejoinings, and his conscious mind clinging to 'because they failed the tests I set them' as an excuse.
Yeaaaah, tempering sucks. I really do think he was just trying to help, he thought in his twisted mind that he was saving people, even if he had to hurt them to do it. :< And man, his hot-and-cold personality shifts really boggled me, without knowing wtf was going on. Like shooting our best kitty so he wouldn't sacrifice himself the way Hyth had,
But yeah, I'm pretty sure his wild shifts were him trying to fight Zodiark's will in order to trust in and work with the WoL...and Zodiark leaning harder on him to make it impossible to defy Him.
then offering the WoL a place to succomb to light sickness "away from prying eyes," and that's again just another instance of twisted out-of-love reasoning that's horrifying and saaaaad when you realize what he's doing.
RIGHT? I had that realization the other day, too, and then was all because he transforms to fight you. literally just him completely tossing all sense out the window!
It's honestly interesting playing Emet post-EW? Because there's a lot of ways he's reverted to his old self, but also a lot of ways just the time and experience with mortal culture have changed him.
Honestly yeah, he specifically says he keeps using Solus' body because he likes it, so he's started to appreciate bits of mortal culture somewhere down the lines. I kind if wonder just why he was so much more even-keel (compared to the other Ascians, though that's saying something in and of itself.) Maybe he was strong enough, aetherically, that the
Lahabrea was explicitly in bad shape because he body hopped so frequently, impersonated so many different people in short periods of time, that it eroded his own sense of self.
He's definitely gone native to a strong degree, while at the same time clinging so hard to the nostalgia glasses that he refuses to admit there are things he likes about mortal culture better than the way things were in Amaurot.
Because if he admits there are things he likes better about the way mortals do things, that means admitting that Amaurot wasn't the perfect paradise he claims it to be :'>
I saw that! XD That was one more thing that I went back and was reminded existed, and then reminded they were his and it just out a whole new perspective on them! He was a theater nerd!
And honestly, as outsiders, we were totally able to see where there were chips in the perfect veneer Amorout had. We just had no chance of changing it in our short time there, and it wouldn't have made a difference, anyway.
Such a theater nerd. By the time we first meet him, he's learned that it's okay to enjoy being the center of attention, compared to originally having it drilled into him that wanting to stand out is egotistical and shameful.
After a certain point, Sunk Cost Fallacy kicks in. He has to believe that the old world was Objectively Better, because otherwise everything he's destroyed to get it back wasn't worth it.
Oh man, I forgot about that. lol he hated people knowing he was there, he didn't want any attention on himself! Man, the character development they show for him is wild.
Even tried to refuse to take his mask off, despite it being protocol! Probably overcompensating, ashamed of his own desire for attention and so actively trying to avoid notice so he could pretend he was a Good and Modest Citizen.
Like. This is a man who helped a baby critter learn to fly! He pretended it was a chore, but he wasn't really gonna leave it unhelped! And then to go from that to Solus...
There's a Garlean soup named after praises sung to Emperor Solus for doing something so personal as sharing hot soup with soldiers after a day of military drills in the cold...
I also wonder how much of the doubling down was because to do otherwise would mean giving up hope on seeing Hyth again, and in admitting that Azem had been right even in the beginning, and the shame that came from that, too.
I mean...I wouldn't even say that's selfish. That's just a natural response to losing someone that important to you, let alone two, and a whole society to boot?
The devs really, really went out of their way to weave little things into the world-building and story to show just how wrong things went for him and how sad it was.
Right? And honestly, the whole creation of Garlemald is sad in and of itself. Their people were enslaved and broke away to form their own nation to escape it!
Yeah, the unexpected-death thing was something me and my gf were really talking about recently. For a culture who saw dying as a personal choice after living immortal lives, and having long, long times to get used to it, even a sacrificial death that was by choice like that would be fast and hard to take, especially when you're also dealing with the rest of
Exactly! So they're in turmoil, freezing and dying in the tundra, starving to death, and he steps up and gets them all to form together into a society that can survive and survive well.
And then he marries and has his first child, and seems so happy and full of hope. There would have been maybe twenty years or so where he was a genuinely loving husband and father, and was actually thinking about the good of Garlemald...
The promise and potential he saw in his son making him think 'maybe this era will be different, maybe humanity is finally restored enough for even mortals to be worth caring about.'
Yeaaaah. And I don't know if Hyth being back would be enough to convince Azem to return, but at that point, they weren't coming back, anyway, so getting Hyth back was the only hope he had of getting either of his loved ones back.
..........Until he found the WoL, and hoped desperately he could convince them to trust him, so that maybe they would take Azem's stone and remember what he was to them in a previous life.
I...don't know if mine would have. At least not the one I'm playing right now (Which, amusingly enough, is a Catboy Aziraphale from Good Omens, and my GF plays Bunnygirl Crowley. Which makes it all so much messier in unintended ways. ) There was too much mistrust in the beginning, constantly trying to see what angle he was pulling and how he
Yeah, that's where Aziraphale is right now. XD Hyth's presence in Elpis certainly made him feel safe enough to not constantly be expecting Emet to go murder-happy when his back was turned, and then Ultima Thule happened and really cemented that "He's safe, he's good, No wait HOLD ON" conflicted sort of feelings. lol
I...don't think I noticed the flirting at first? XD But that could be because I was so used to the Villain Flirting With The Hero being what Zenos was doing, so Emet's was a whole lot more subtle.
I'm sure I had a couple instances of "...what? Ew. That sounded...creepery. What the heck?" but it didn't sink in until much later, when it was basically revealed that No. You were totally this man's spouse before the sundering.
Also, you can imagine my complete shock when we were in the Elidibus battle, we got poofed into the void, and then one of those Ancients in the robes wandered in like "naw, bitch. Not letting you do that to my spouse" and I was like " Ohhh, is that Hyd-...Hyth-...New-Old-Friend??? Did he come and save us???" Only to watch him turn around and give
Seriously, there are absolutely so many things that the devs put in that make the ship so blatant, whether or not they say they're keeping it vague so you can fill it in with your own headcanon.
Until someone pointed out the character trope Haurchefant was filling to me, I thought it was a creepy one-sided stalkery thing. It didn't help that they literally had the WoL side-eyeing him in concern when you came back from some mission and he flipped out because you'd put yourself into danger.
They...cut out the vast majority of his horny dialogue in English, because they were afraid a male character who's so blatantly trying to get into the hero's pants wouldn't go over as well in a culture without a major 'heroic debouche' trope.
XD See, with our two idiots, my GF's Crowley is always the one pointing out pretty people going "We can invite that one to bed." and my Aziraphale was very "Crowley! 8U" for a long time. Now, though, he's started doing it, too. lol It just took like...4 expansion packs.
Her side eyeing Haurchefaunt wasn't because 'uh lewd?', it was because someone who comes on that strong, that quickly in La Noscea? Has high chances of being a scout for a slaver ring.
It doesn't help that I absolutely headcanon that outside of our weird, canon-breaking crossover characters that started as mostly a joke, the scions, and probably most of Etheirys, are a very non-binary, polyamorous society. Maybe some groups aren't that way, but they're outside the norm.
By the time she met Emet, she was no longer afraid of slavers...but was kind of 'haha villain pretending to hit on the hero, very funny, shut up', before she started to believe his overtures of peace were genuine.
Her response to him quoting a racy scene from a romcom over the lantern was an eye roll and 'give me that', and by the second 'I like to watch', she actually was amused.
Doesn't help that the end of his story literally just came out less than a year ago, so people are still experiencing it fresh and getting traumatized all over again...XD
bonus; characters who then realize how fucked up they are and go 'what have i done'Except Lahabrea, who had just gone too crazy to realize or care that he was breaking things in ways that didn't need broken from any perspective.LOL Well, yeah, and also Fandaniel is a little "Sir. SIR. Stop your shenanigans, you are not helping things!"Up until the end, where he's just completely given in to what caused it all and gone even farther over the bend than Lahabrea...Hermes, you are being a little too supportive here!Slow to reply, oops. I work overnights, but also I'm actively playing the game between calls. XDHonestly, him being a theater nerd shouldn't be a shock. He's such a dramatic bitch by the time we first meet him. lol Much more than his old self.By the time we first meet him, he's learned that it's okay to enjoy being the center of attention, compared to originally having it drilled into him that wanting to stand out is egotistical and shameful.Oh man, I forgot about that. lol he hated people knowing he was there, he didn't want any attention on himself! Man, the character development they show for him is wild.Even tried to refuse to take his mask off, despite it being protocol! Probably overcompensating, ashamed of his own desire for attention and so actively trying to avoid notice so he could pretend he was a Good and Modest Citizen.Doesn't help that the end of his story literally just came out less than a year ago, so people are still experiencing it fresh and getting traumatized all over again...XD